Those Blue Shorts Dad Used to Wear

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British Columbia, Canada, Dad, Diana Schwenk, dreams, family, growing up, Hump Day Chronicles, Life's like that, love, memories, Mom, parents, Pinantan Lake, Relationships, Stuff my parents used to say and do

The other day in the early hours of the morning I was sleeping and in my dream Dad was waking me up. I opened my eyes and he was wearing those blue shorts he used to wear and an undershirt. It was a younger version of Dad and he was handing me a gift…

I woke up thinking, I got to remember this dream and the gift. Later in the day I’d forgotten the gift. I should have written it down when I woke up.

“Those blue shorts. Man I saw him clear as day in that dream,”  I thought to myself. And then yesterday after work,  I remembered I had a picture of him, wearing those shorts and an undershirt!

Mom was always good at taking pictures. I still joke that if I go to the bathroom, I have to lock the door to prevent Mom from coming in to take a picture. But back in 1985, Mom and Dad came to visit me in Pinantan Lake. They’d flown to Calgary, rented a car and drove through the Rocky Mountains to see me.

Mom with Dad wearing those blue shorts and undershirt

Dad, me and Mom at Paul Lake

Me, Shannon and Dad

Mom and Dad on the last day of their visit to Pinantan Lake

It occurs to me as I write  this post, that Dad was two years younger than I am today back then and in my dream it’s sort of like two peers connected for a moment in time. And maybe that’s all the gift I really need to remember. I miss you so much Dad, thanks for visiting in my dreams.

~ HUMP DAY CHRONICLES ~

Have you ever looked at picture of your parents at the age you are now and wondered what it would have been like to hang out with them as peers?

Crotchety Old Fart

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aging, caring, Charity, community, compassion, courage, Diana Schwenk, easy-going, family, friends, generosity, happy, health, integrity, joy, Kamloops, kindness, laugh lines, laughter, living in the moment, love, passion, peace, Pinantan Lake, Purpose, Relationships, tolerance

They say we can’t choose the face we’re born with but we can choose the face we grow old with.

My friend Helga and I have lots of discussions about the things that are really important in life.

I have this theory that the older we get, the more intense our quirks become.

Say for instance, a young person is a neat freak. Everything has its place and every place has its things.

As this person ages they become almost neurotic about neatness.

Helga feels that the older we get the less tolerant we become and she points back to when we first met to illustrate this.

I hope she’s wrong but more on that in a moment.

~

I’ve known Helga for 27 years. We met at Pinantan Lake, just outside Kamloops, British Columbia.

Pinantan is a small community, and when I lived there in the 80’s it had a population of about 300 folks, including chickens and other livestock.

Just the other day we were talking about how easy-going we were in our early 20’s.

If one of us was cooking dinner when the other came over (unannounced) we would just set another place at the table.

Or if one wasn’t awake yet when we went to the other’s place, the visiting one would just put on a pot of coffee, sit right down at the table and wait for the other to wake up.

That’s right; we didn’t lock our doors back then!

This is the house I lived in and rented for $150 per month.

If a neighbour needed help, we would just drop everything and head over there.

(Or at the very least volunteer our significant other)

We didn’t pay much attention to how others dressed, kept their homes, raised their children or anything else.

We just accepted people for who they were.

We had a certain laissez-faire attitude about life.

There wasn’t a lot of money in our community but we had each other and we shared our resources.

I had laying hens, someone else had a milking cow, we went out in groups to get firewood for the winter, we baked bread and cooked all our meals and made all our baked goods from scratch. And oh so many fun potlucks!

They were simpler times and we were happy.

I’m not sure how I would feel about stumbling out of my bedroom to find someone waiting for me in my apartment now – even with coffee!

What I do know is that I remember our days there with great fondness. People took each other at face value and we didn’t waste a moment worrying about whether someone was playing us or not.

~

For the last decade or so, my heart has been longing for that kind of simplicity again. I still look for the good in people but I’ve been a little slower to trust, a tad sceptical at times and downright inhospitable at other times.

I hope my theory is true. I hope that who I was at heart when I was younger will intensify as I get older. Because I would rather trust people and be burned than be suspicious of every person I encounter.

But maybe the truth is simpler. Maybe I just have to choose to be a certain way.

Maybe theories are just that – theories.

~ THE HUMP DAY CHRONICLES ~

I want to grow old with a kind face, with eyes that are crinkled with laugh lines and smile lines deeply carved around my mouth.

I don’t want to be a crotchety old fart.

How about you?